Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,239

and locked her arms around my neck. Her face was tucked down against my shoulder blade again.

I thought it would feel better, safer, when I was running, when we were racing away from the danger at an acceptable speed, but the momentum did nothing to dissolve the solid block of panic that seemed to weigh me down. I knew this was an illusion—I was flying through the trees as fast as I could go without hurting her—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was making no progress at all.

Even when the Jeep appeared, and in less than a second I had Bella in the backseat, it felt like I was lagging behind.

“Strap her in,” I hissed to Emmett. He’d chosen the back with Bella, recognizing that he would be her bodyguard as long as I needed to drive. He was willing, even eager.

For once, Emmett’s disposition toward humor was quelled—a mercy, as I would not have been able to bear it now. His temper was roused, and his thoughts were all directed toward violence.

Alice sat by me, and without my asking, she was sprinting through all the futures we could face now. Mostly there was a dark road ahead of us, flying away under the tires, with no clear destination in mind. But there were other futures going in the wrong direction, back in Forks, inside Bella’s home and our own, though I couldn’t imagine what would turn me around.

We lurched and careened across the rough road as fast as I dared go without chancing flipping the Jeep, but it continued to feel like I was losing a race.

While Alice kept searching—there was the blistering sunlight again, why would we choose that kind of location when it would trap us indoors?—I focused on the road. Finally we were back to the highway, and I wished fervently we were in another car, any other—mine, Rose’s, Carlisle’s. The Jeep wasn’t modified for racing. But there was nothing for it.

I was vaguely aware of the sound of my own voice, snarling out half-articulated obscenities, but it felt distant from me, as though not under my control.

That was the only sound besides the roar of the engine, the tires moving against the wet road, Bella’s uneven breathing in the back, and her thudding heart.

Alice was seeing a hotel room now, but it could be anywhere. The curtains were closed.

“Where are we going?”

Bella’s question sounded like it was coming from a distance, too. My thoughts were too wound up inside Alice’s visions or frozen with dread for me to compose an answer. It was almost as if the question didn’t apply to me.

Her voice had quavered, little more than a whisper. But now it turned hard.

“Dammit, Edward! Where are you taking me?”

I pulled away from the confusing swirl of Alice’s futures so that I could be present. Bella must be terrified.

“We have to get you away from here—far away—now,” I explained.

I would have thought the idea of being far away would be a welcome one, but she was suddenly shouting, her hands fighting with the harness as she tried to loose herself.

“Turn around! You have to take me home!”

How did I explain to her that she’d lost her home for now, that the loathsome hunter had stolen more than that from her tonight?

The priority for the moment, though, was keeping her from throwing herself out of the Jeep.

Emmett was already wondering if he should restrain her. I spoke his name, low and hard, so he would know that I wanted him to do this. He caught her wrists carefully in his huge hands and immobilized them.

“No! Edward! No,” she howled at me. “You can’t do this!”

I didn’t know what she thought I was doing. Did she think I had a choice? The sound of her anger, her desperation, made it hard to concentrate. It felt like I was the one hurting her, rather than the danger of the tracker.

“I have to, Bella,” I hissed. “Now please be quiet.” I needed to see what Alice was seeing.

“I won’t!” she shouted at me. “You have to take me back—Charlie will call the FBI! They’ll be all over your family—Carlisle and Esme! They’ll have to leave, to hide forever!”

This was what she was worried about? I supposed it shouldn’t surprise me that she was going to pieces over the wrong menace.

“Calm down, Bella. We’ve been there before.” So we had to start over. It seemed a meaningless thing at the moment.

“Not over me, you don’t!” she shrieked.